USA Hopefuls Open With Best Pickup Game Ever

BALTIMORE – For the first night of Team
USA trials, coach Richie Meade and his primary staff set up chairs
along the sideline of the field at Goucher College, split the
hopefuls into four groups, rolled a ball out and watched.

That they could have been sitting there with popcorn may be a
bit of an exaggeration, but the atmosphere of the evening was
definitely loose and unstructured, even if Meade and company were
keeping a close eye on the action on the field.

It was, as we discussed between the halves (and subsequently
tweeted), essentially the highest level pick-up game that the game
could ever produce.

"There's a million ways you can [evaluate]," Meade said. "You
can do drills and try to see certain things, but at the end of the
day, we thought that the best way to do it was to give [the
players] some guidance and see what they could do."

And when you leave things wide open for some of the best players
in the world to show you what they can do, you're going to see some
fireworks.

"I told my wife on the phone [before the session], I'm probably
going to see some things that I"ve never seen before," said Meade,
who has coached at the Division I level since the late 1970s.

Highlights of the offensive prowess of the players invited are
easy to point to – Rob Pannell finished with three goals and
three assists in the first scrimmage, including playing a role in
his team's first four scores. Matt Danowski scored four goals and
an assist. Kevin Leveille had four goals, while Garrett Thul and
Jack Rice had three apiece.

What doesn't show up in a "box score" is what drove much of the
action on the evening, though. Things like all-world player Max
Seibald sprinting full-bore into the corner on a pass that sailed
10 feet over his head, diving to try to keep it in bounds. In a
tryout situation, you might see players try to make up for a
mistake that they make with a huge effort play. Not as
often will you see that kind of push just to save a sideline ball
that wasn't even that player's fault.

It's also difficult to quantify what the defenders were doing
– partially because defense is so much about developing a
working relationship with the guys around you. It's easy to say
that Kip Turner allowed two goals in his half of work in the second
scrimmage, but harder to talk about the work that guys like Kyle
Sweeney were doing in front of him.

The biggest question marks on the roster selection process
– goalkeeper and faceoff – will be decided on much more
than just one evening's work, but Turner and Drew Adams (four
saves) both looked good, while Anthony Kelly had a 9-for-11 night
at the X to take the spotlight on that front.

More than anything, though, the opening session was just the
beginning of the final phase of the assessment process that Meade
and his staff have been weaving throughout the process of selecting
the folks who were invited to this weekend.

"We're not at the point where we're looking to coach these
guys," he said. "We're at the end of an evaluation stage, so we
just want to be able to sit back and evaluate and see how guys
react."

Injuries Continue to Take Toll

A pair of the injured players going into the weekend –
Brendan Munodorf and Paul Rabil – spent much of their evening
with bags of ice on their persons. Rabil, who will undergo surgery
after this weekend for a sports hernia, played in the first session
and played well before icing himself down for most of the second
session from the sideline. Mundorf, however, tweaked his knee
before his second session debut and was scratched. He watched from
the sidelines as well. Nobody seemed exceptionally banged up during
the course of the action, though Billy Bitter took a very hard
check to the arm, and it looked like he might have been feeling it
for a bit – to the point where a teammate asked if he wanted
to come off while the ball was on the other end. Bitter, however,
shrugged the request off and continued on.

Weekend a Learning Process

Standing on the sidelines, it seemed like the games were also
serving as a clinic on the international game for some of the folks
on the field. Overheard was a referee warning more than one player
about how hard they were checking, indicating that the
international rules are much more about being under control than
NCAA.

Managing Expectations

With the level of action on the field despite it being such an
informal type of game, it was easy to get excited about the talent
that Coach Meade and his staff have to work with. But in the
post-game interview, he was quick to shrug off my suggestion that
the talent of the USA prospects would mean that you could take just
about anybody from this list and beat most team's in the
world...

"There's a lot of great players here but I don't agree," Meade
said. "We've got to pick the right guys and find that balance
between coaching and playing. The worst thing you can do with great
talent is over-coach it. And the worst thing you can do with great
talent is under-coach it.

"You've got to identify that talent and come up with a system
and a way to play that gives us the best chance to win."

Who They're Reppin'

There was an interesting mix of lids on the field for the
session. Most of the players were rocking either their MLL team
helmets (or college helmets for the current NCAA guys). But a few
of the pros wore their college helments. Among them: Kyle Sweeney
(Georgetown), JoJo Marasco (Syracuse), Billy Bitter (North
Carolina), Brian Farrell (Maryland) and Chris Bocklet
(Virginia).

Odds and Ends

Brett Queener didn't tone down his clearing style. He didn't
burn up to the box and try to score, but he showed no hesitation to
leave the cage and take the ball up on the clear and did so a
couple of times in his half of work... Kyle Sweeney scored –
not that shocking for a guy who is one of the better long poles in
the MLL and who also plays in the NLL. But what's unusual is that
he scored by taking a pass behind the net and curling around the
crease to fire one high, not unlike a couple of the goals Pannell
had... Meade seemed to definitely have Geoff Snider's recent
resurgence in mind when talking after the scrimmages. "If you're a
faceoff guy, we have to see how you do here, but we also have to
project how you'll do against guys that we have to face," he
said... Kevin Buchanan had two highlights of the night. Late in his
game he split a double-team to score a nice individual-effort goal.
Earlier, he made a great change-of-direction move -- my dad would
have referred to it as "stopping on a dime and leaving nine cents
change" -- to free his hands, then ripped a hard pass across the
crease to Drew Westervelt for the finish.

Check back to LaxMagazine.com for more coverage from
Team USA tryouts, including video interviews, photo galleries and
updates on sessions throughout hte weekend.